


now i'm flying fast on my feet, skipping rivers and clearing fences

by squash1



Series: trc prompts [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: CDTH spoilers, M/M, POV Blue Sargent, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 06:16:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20353747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squash1/pseuds/squash1
Summary: Two years after becoming friends with them, Blue meets the boys at Nino's and finds herself caught between past, present, and future.~prompt: "Adam making Ronan laugh out loud so beautifully around the gang, completely in their own bubble."





	now i'm flying fast on my feet, skipping rivers and clearing fences

**Author's Note:**

> anon on tumblr requested: Adam making Ronan laugh out loud so beautifully around the gang, completely in their own bubble?
> 
> and so i took this prompt and ran with it..... far.
> 
> but it's all still in there lol.

When Blue slides into their favourite booth at Nino’s, everyone else is already there. Gansey is squished into the short side by the window, taking up the head of the table whilst Henry sits to his right, Ronan to his left. From the other side of the table, Adam is smiling at her in his considerate, kind way, almost the same expression he used to wear when they were all still in high school but remarkably less pinched and more genuine.

“Hi, Blue,” he says, lifting his hand to give her a small wave. The others are engulfed in a discussion about Devil knows what. Henry is pointedly drawing shapes onto the worn laminate whilst Gansey watches him intently, fingertips pressed against his temples as if his big nerd brain is threatening to spill out of his ears at any moment now. Ronan is scowling at the entire scene but turns his head to stare out at the parking lot before Blue can meet his gaze.

So, her eyes fall back on Adam, expression more neutral now. He’s leaning slightly to his right as if he is waiting for the arm Ronan has slung around the back of his back rest to drop, as if he  _ wants _ it wrapped around his shoulders.

“Hey,” Blue says. She’s a bit sweaty from the bike ride, slightly late because her mother needed help with a reading earlier. Gansey and Henry had spent the night at 300 Fox Way with her and had driven ahead to meet Ronan and Adam at their group’s regular hangout spot.

“How’s it going?” Adam asks, leaning forward slightly. With all the noise coming from the end of the booth, Blue knows that he is trying to block out Henry and Gansey to hear her more clearly.

This isn’t their first meeting on this trip of coming back to Henrietta. Adam has been staying at the Barns ever since he finished the semester a couple weeks ago. The five of them have been spending plenty of time together this summer, Blue and Adam working part-time jobs and meeting up with the rest of their group most evenings, either for pizza or gelato or both.  _ For old times’ sake _ , Gansey would say. It doesn’t matter much that each and every one of them has grown significantly ever since that fateful November almost two years ago. When they sit at their favourite booth at Nino’s or huddle up around a campfire at the Barns, they’re all eighteen again, laughing, reminiscing, and yearning. 

Blue watches Adam whisper something in Ronan’s ear, and though she does not know the specific contents of this utterance, she can guess that it is something mischievous by the way Ronan’s features contort and pull complicatedly into a variety of directions. Briefly, Ronan side-eyes Adam in what seems to be an attempt at covert, nondescript eye contact, then he leans his body to the left, bumping into Adam with his arm slung triumphantly across his shoulders.

Blue almost wants to drift off, wants to grant the two of them some privacy, but then Adam leans in and says something Blue doesn’t quite catch. Ronan laughs and it’s nothing she’s ever heard before. It’s unhinged and loud, joyous in a way she has never experienced her angry and twisty friend. Similarly, Adam is looking positively abashed, blushing at the sheer volume of Ronan’s elated outburst. Blue watches him lean his forehead against the crook of Ronan’s shoulder, a subtle rose tinting his cheeks. When she realises that she has been staring, it’s a moment too late. Gansey catches her eye just as she lets her gaze drift off the lovey-doviness in front of her. There is an intensity in his eyes, a strange kind of wide-eyed stare that suggests perplexity or discomfiture or surprise, the precise emotion difficult to discern from across a diner booth.

Either way, Blue is pulled from her thought when their pizza arrives. Gansey’s ordered two large pies for everyone to share, as usual. Blue looks at Adam over the cheese pizza, conveniently placed so neither of them will have to pay much attention to Gansey’s half sausage half avocado abomination. Adam takes a sip of his cola first, looking down at the table self-consciously. Blue can sort of guess that he still feels like eating the pizza Gansey ordered for them is like eating someone else’s food. Sympathy blossoms in her chest as she looks at the boy across the table. It grips her tight from within, unwinds something fragile and leaves her teetering on the verge of sadness.

With emotions too complex to unpack, Blue decides to simply pick up a piece of cheese pizza and hold it up halfway over the table. Adam catches on quickly enough, sharp as he is, and cheerses her with an identical slice.

“To friendship,” Blue says, smiling as gently as she can muster.

A combination of relief and happy tugs at Adam’s features. “And to the future,” he adds.

“Jesus Fuck, you guys,” Ronan chimes in. Blue should have known that he had been observing them. After all, she hasn’t seen him take his eyes off Adam for the better part of the past two years. “Are we getting sentimental? I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

“And what did you sign up for, Lynch?” Adam asks, 

“Eating food like a normal fucking person,” Ronan claims, taking an enormous bite of his own slice.

Adam rolls his eyes so hard, Blue is afraid they might fall out of his skull. “Oh,  _ please _ .”

“Yes, dear?” Ronan asks in an overly sweet voice as he blinks bashfully at him.

“Shut the fuck up, Ronan,” Adam groans, then sighs. “ _ God _ .”

Ronan throws his head back laughing, voice bellowing through the restaurant. A couple of heads turn to sneak a look at their table and even Gansey and Henry look up from their discussion, which is saying something since not even the arrival of their pizzas could intercept their avid conversation on who the fuck knows what.

Wrapped up in their own little bubble of flirtatious snark, Adam and Ronan don’t seem to notice anyone else at the table. As Blue chews her pizza, she watches them interact. Ronan’s arm is still more or less casually wrapped around Adam’s shoulders, a gesture so intimate and inexplicably Ronan that it makes Blue feel almost as though she is intruding on something secret. 

There is a softness to his demeanor Blue hasn’t seen before, a natural sort of tenderness she must have missed the last time they spent time together. Somehow, Ronan is more subdued than before and yet more intense. Blue is reminded of all the times Gansey has expressed his worries about Ronan in particular, about how sad and alone he still perceived him to be. But now, after all of these first-hand impressions, Blue comes to the conclusion that maybe Ronan has always had more layers than any of them assumed. Maybe his sadness, his anger and his frustration is still in there somewhere. Maybe these are things only time and self-reflection can heal, rather than the taking on of a lover. Maybe, Blue thinks, Gansey is wrong about these things. Maybe Adam is not detrimental to Ronan’s mental wellbeing. Maybe loving Adam is something that energises Ronan, something that makes him want to get better. 

Blue knows this feeling all too well. She, too, has come to find reasons to go on after the events of two summers ago.  _ Trees _ , she has decided. Trees and family, her friends and finding new ways to be in love with with people and the world every day. These are the things that drive her, that make her feel good about herself and her future.

Looking and Adam and Ronan, it seems as though the both of them have found something that drives them, too. Might have found speckles of it within each other, even. Ronan seems happier now that he spends half his time at the Barns and the other half in Cambridge, finding new friends that are just as loud and rambunctious as himself. Adam seems to be more than okay with these developments too. Over the past year that he has spent at Harvard University, Blue has seen him happy so much more frequently. Oftentimes he will tell her about his friends there, and about how much he wants her to visit one day and meet them all. Or maybe he will invite them for his birthday and the annexed Fourth of July celebration. Blue feels her heart soar a little bit every time Adam throws her that same old shy grin, when his eyes go a little soft and maybe a little sad as he asks her about her family and how her trip was and how her college applications are going. The knowledge that, after everything, Adam Parrish wants to be friends with her leaves Blue feeling a warm sort of nostalgia in her chest, a longing not only for the past but also for their future.

Maybe they had lost some of the magic, and maybe they had learned to live without it for a while. But they also learned how to fight for it and build it back up again, and in the end there is nothing Blue Sargent loves more than her friends, her Raven Boys.


End file.
